


Songs About Drifters

by ignipes



Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-03
Updated: 2008-03-03
Packaged: 2017-11-04 09:25:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/392286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We'll work it out, we will, even if we have to scrap the whole thing and start over."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Songs About Drifters

"The thing is."

Ryan looked up from his notebook. Brendon was standing in the doorway.

"The thing is," Brendon said, "you're not the only one who's worried."

"I'm not." Ryan looked down at the page, tapped his pen a few times and began tracing a thick black line over the same curling letters. "I'm not worried."

"Scared, then." Brendon crossed the room in a few steps and plucked the notebook from Ryan's hand. Instead of flipping through the pages like he usually did, he dropped it on the floor and swayed forward, bumped his knees against the side of the bed. "You're not the only one who's scared."

"I'm not," Ryan said.

"Liar, liar, pants on fire." Brendon crawled over Ryan's legs and sat cross-legged beside him. "You're scared. Anxious. Frightened. Nervous. Freaking out."

"What the fuck. Have you been reading the thesaurus?"

"No, that's your hobby, not mine."

Ryan scowled, even though it was kind of true. "Well, I'm not. Any of those things. I'm just--"

"Scared."

"No. Shut up."

It came out more severe than Ryan intended, but Brendon's just laughed quietly. "You are so not as inscrutable as you think you are, Mister Man of Not Very Much Mystery."

"It's just..." Ryan closed his eyes for a second, concentrated on the feel of Brendon's finger's tapping absently on his shin, a rapid sequence of touches that probably sounded like music in some part of Brendon's mind. "I don't think it's..."

When he didn't go on, Brendon asked, "It's not what?"

"Working. It's not working," Ryan said. He didn't let himself whisper or rush through it. "The whole--I mean, the whole thing, as a whole. There's supposed to be a story, it's supposed to be more than... I don't know. It just doesn't feel..." Ryan trailed off. There were too many ways for that sentence to end.

Brendon didn't say anything for a long time. A car crunched on the gravel outside, and somewhere in the house a door opened and shut. The window in Ryan's room faced west and sunlight poured in, brilliant and blinding. He'd told the guys he wanted the room for the view, but in truth he rarely looked out. He just liked to know it was there. West was where people turned when they wanted to go forward, to find something new, to start walking and never look back.

"Yeah," Brendon said finally. "You're right."

Ryan looked at him. "I am?"

"I think--" Brendon hesitated. He unfolded his legs and swung them around, laid down beside Ryan and propped his chin on his hands. "I mean, I think we _could_ make it work, if we wanted, but... I'm just not really excited about playing these songs for months, years, you know? It's not that I don't... Just, I don't know. Shouldn't we be more excited about them?"

Ryan frowned. "If you--why didn't you say something before?"

Brendon shrugged. "Don't know. Guess I didn't really realize it until you flipped out and made us all cry."

"I did not make you cry."

"You totally did. Especially Spencer. It was really sad. You know how sniffly and gross he gets, and seriously, didn't he ever learn not to wipe his nose on his sleeve?"

"Shut up. Stop being mean."

"Make me," Brendon said, and even without looking Ryan could hear the smile in his voice. "Fine, you didn't make anybody cry. But _you_ were mean, and we didn't... It's our music too."

Ryan did look down then, tried to figure out exactly what Brendon was saying. "I know that."

"Then you should also know that you don't have to do this by yourself." Brendon turned onto his side and put one hand on Ryan's chest, fingers still tapping away quickly. Ryan wondered if Brendon saw black and white keys everywhere he looked, silent notes waiting to be played on every surface. "If you want to, well, that's one thing. If you've got--I don't know, if you've got to prove that you _can_ write an entire album by yourself, that's, well, we know how your freaky-weird brain works. But you don't _have_ to, Ryan. You don't have to do it by yourself."

"I--I know that."

"We can help."

"I _know_ , I do--"

"We've got good ideas," Brendon said calmly. "We'll work it out, we will, even if we have to scrap the whole thing and start over."

Ryan held his breath for a second, let it out slowly. "Do you think we--"

Brendon lifted himself up on his elbow. "Isn't that what this is all about?"

There were scraps of paper all over the house, half-finished songs and half-formed ideas. They had a handful of recordings, lackluster in everything they were missing, and Ryan had a list for each one, a collection of things that didn't work. ("Jesus fuck," Spencer had said, twirling a drumstick in one hand, his voice deceptively flat. "Do you think you could stop talking about how much we all suck for a few minutes, maybe?") Ryan could pick out every line that didn't ring true, every melody they couldn't play without tripping. He didn't have to be playing or listening to hear them.

"Yeah." It was a relief to let Brendon say it first, to agree with one short breath. "Yeah, maybe we should..."

"We'll talk about it tomorrow." Brendon flattened his hand on Ryan's chest. "It'll be okay. We can do this. Hi, Jon."

Ryan turned his head quickly. Jon was standing in the doorway, a six-pack of beer on one hand and roll of paper towels in the other. "What can you do?" he asked. He kicked off his flip-flops as he came into the room.

"Not just us," Brendon said. He curled his legs up to give Jon a spot to sit at the end of the bed. "All of us."

"We'll talk about it tomorrow," Ryan said. Jon nodded but he didn't say anything, and Ryan wasn't sure whether he heard the promise or not. "Where's Spence?"

"Foraging for your dinner in the barren desert," Spencer said from the doorway. He was carrying two pizza boxes and still wearing his sunglasses. "I've got cactus and rattlesnake and piñon nuts. Move over."

Brendon grinned and rolled over, arms and legs thrown wide to take up more space. "Rattlesnake, really?"

"I killed it with my bare hands and skinned it with my teeth. _Move_ , octopus-boy."

"We have you so well trained, mountain man."

Spencer dropped the pizza boxes directly onto Brendon's chest. "It's all meat. Nothing but meat. Little dead animals all over the pizza. You don't want any of it."

"I want all of it," Brendon insisted. "I'm starving. I haven't eaten in forever."

"You mean, since four o'clock?" Spencer shoved Brendon's arm and leg aside and sat down, flipped the first pizza box open. The lid smacked Brendon in the nose and hid his face. "What are we talking about tomorrow?"

"Yeah. _Forever_ ," Brendon said, his voice muffled by the cardboard. "I'm a growing boy. Gimme some rattlesnake." He held out one hand blindly and wriggled his fingers.

"I don't think mushrooms are like rattlesnakes," Jon said contemplatively. He twisted the cap off his beer bottle and took a sip. "But it would be cool if they were. They would make little rattlesnake noises in their, like, little mushroom bunches in the forest when you walked by."

Ryan glared at the pizza--no rattlesnake, unfortunately--and sighed. "We're not eating on my bed again." There were still crumbs from the chocolate cake three days ago.

"We're eating all over your bed again," Spencer replied. "It's not like you ever wash your sheets."

Ryan made a face at him. "Why are you still wearing your sunglasses? You're such a dork."

"To eat pizza." Spencer took a bite and made a great show of chewing noisily. "On your bed. What are we talking about tomorrow?"

"We'll talk about it tomorrow," Ryan said. "If you get crumbs in my bed, I'm going to sleep in yours."

"That's okay. I like having someone to kick," Spencer said. "What are we talking about tomorrow?"

"We're talking about how annoying you are when you keep asking the same questions."

Spencer stuck his tongue out in reply.

Brendon knocked the lid of the pizza box away from his face. "Music. We're going to talk about making sweet, sweet music, and nobody is going to yell or throw things or cry." He managed to sound both flippant and dead serious; it was one of Brendon's many peculiar and enviable talents.

"I might cry," Jon said. "But I'll be sure to do it in a gruff, manly way."

"That's acceptable," Brendon told him. "You can pretend you're reading the end of _Where the Red Fern Grows_ again and we won't hold it against you."

"It was _sad_ ," Jon said defensively. "Poor Little Ann, she lost her will to live. You just don't understand because your heart is made of stone."

Spencer patted Jon's arm absently, but he was looking at Ryan when he said, "Music, huh?"

Ryan really wanted Spencer to take off his stupid sunglasses so Ryan could see his eyes. "Yeah," he said, watching Spencer carefully. "I like music, you know. It's cool."

Spencer's lips twitched. "Yeah, me too. It's pretty cool. Hey, you know what we should do?"

"We should start a band," Ryan said. He didn't even have to work for the deadpan anymore. "It would be totally cool."

Spencer smiled at that, shook his head and--Ryan didn't have to see this to know it--rolled his eyes behind his dark glasses.

"Can I be in your band?" Brendon asked. "I play the kazoo. I'm like a pro, everyone says."

"Kazoos are awesome," Jon said. "We should write a whole song just for kazoo."

Ryan waited for the twist of _no, not yet_ , the pang of _wait, wait_ to follow, to latch itself onto the _we_ Jon said so easily. But there was nothing except relief, maybe a little bit of anticipation.

"Kazoo with harmonica accompaniment," he said, and Jon grinned.

"Yeah, that's definitely classier," Spencer said. He flipped the pizza box lid up into Brendon's face again. "It's just too bad we don't know anybody who can play guitar."

Ryan flipped him off and reached for a piece of pizza.


End file.
